CyberStorm

Rating: 4/5

—————————————————————————————————————————

Remember this dialogue from the movie ‘The Dark Knight Rises‘ –

Selina Kyle: There’s a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches, because when it hits, you’re all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.

But that’s the fictional storm in the movie, everyday we hear about some storm hitting some country, it may be cold-weather storms or snow storms or Thunderstorms or lightning storms or sand storms or Hurricanes – all these storms are God made natural storms. There is one storm if it’s hit us in today’s well-connected through internet world – then it will be a most devastating storm of all and it’s called the CyberStorm.

Today, almost everyone is dependent on machines and internet – either it may be the water supply chain or electric supply chain or food chain or career for delivering goods or mobile networks almost everything is dependent on internet. just imagine what will happen if internet goes down for couple of weeks due to some virus – which will also bring down all the power stations including water supply chain and on top of that you are witnessing one of the worst snow storm of all time. Just imagine how the life will be devastated by all this? No water, No electricity, No GPS, No internet everything is out – and you are pushed back in a 70’s era.

This exactly same scenario put into fiction brilliantly by Matthew Mather in his book CyberStorm. The story revolves around bunch of guys stuck in an apartment in new york on Christmas eve when CyberStorm storms their lives. In this book you won’t find how the virus took over all the essential of life or how it being created but here you will know how to survive the cyber attack shown in this book through bunch of friends/neighbors of Mike Mitchell who try survive the cyber attack and a worst snow storm.

And the worst part of CyberStorm is – no one knows who did it? as all the communication and transport systems are down due to CyberStorm (and worst Snow Storm of all time). Chinese? Iranians? Russians? No one knows exactly but many theories and conspiracy theories are floating all around New York, some say they are Chinese, some Iranians and some Russians other conspiracy theorist say it’s alien invasion or inside job to wage war against some other country by blaming it on them.

What I liked most in this book is the events shown in this book are believable not like other end of the world fiction in which zombies or aliens etc invade us to take control of the world. The cyber attack shown in this book was very realistic – that you almost feel like it will happen anytime and you want to prepare for it. The character development is good and you will feel the connect with most the characters in this book.

Why four stars? well few things in this book looked bit of unreal to me – like people drinking the blood of dead people as water supply is down for weeks though whole New York is covered in snow and also people eating infant childs? seriously? apart from these parts the book is very well written and neatly organized.

CyberStorm is a novel for anyone who enjoys insightful, cutting-edge fiction mixed with action and adventure.